[Frost] Frost aoe rotation

I've been wondering for a while how to get the most out of aoe and finally figured I would ask to see if anyone has some opinions on the matter.

I know it's usually rather controversial since it isn't usually simmed but its better to ask then not to ask.

I generally put nether tempest on 3 targets, put down flamestrike and then continue the single target rotation. The only other thing I do different is if the targets can be frozen I'll use all my freezes after I use frozen orb to get as many crits from it as possible.

If there's 5+ targets for most of the fight I simply swap to frost bomb and do the same rotation as above.

People have talked about using arcane explosion when there's a certain amount of targets as well. How many mobs are required before you would actually use it?

For 2~5 targets wouldn't Living Bomb work better? Maybe I am doing it wrong but I prefer LB over NT for any fight that is not single target. I use LB with glyph of fireblast to spread the dots, because I suck at tab targeting, makes it so much easier to keep them up.

For 2~5 targets wouldn't Living Bomb work better? Maybe I am doing it wrong but I prefer LB over NT for any fight that is not single target. I use LB with glyph of fireblast to spread the dots, because I suck at tab targeting, makes it so much easier to keep them up.

As strange as it sounds I like to stay as far away from fire as possible which includes not using living bomb. That aside it seems like a waste of a glyph slot since I struggle to only use 3 already.

what, why is nobody mentioning that they should be using pet freeze on the targets right before frost bomb goes off, that increases your damage more than anything else, especially if you can line up flamestrike with frostbomb detonation

what, why is nobody mentioning that they should be using pet freeze on the targets right before frost bomb goes off, that increases your damage more than anything else, especially if you can line up flamestrike with frostbomb detonation

I think nobody mentioned it because it was assumed everyone knew. Despite asking questions I'm actually a pretty good mage. I just like asking questions :P

Is that a flavor choice or is there a min/max reason to stay away from fire? As far as glyphs go, what 3 glyphs do you need to use that would prevent you from using glyph of fireblast?

Flavour choice. If it was a significant improvement I would be happy to use it though.

As for glyphs Icy veins is required no matter what since I'm at 21.5% haste. Ice lance is rather important for aoe. The 3rd glyph is the toughest to pick. I like Evocation and water elemental but you could certainly use fire blast in place of them. I wish blizz would just make the water elemental glyph default and take away the size increase.

I noticed the frostbolt tooltip talks about water jet. I don't know if its a mistake or a hint about it being introduced eventually.

Flavour choice. If it was a significant improvement I would be happy to use it though.

As for glyphs Icy veins is required no matter what since I'm at 21.5% haste. Ice lance is rather important for aoe. The 3rd glyph is the toughest to pick. I like Evocation and water elemental but you could certainly use fire blast in place of them. I wish blizz would just make the water elemental glyph default and take away the size increase.

I noticed the frostbolt tooltip talks about water jet. I don't know if its a mistake or a hint about it being introduced eventually.

I agree, I think that NT may sim as higher dps, but I know that I suck at keeping it up on more than 1 mob, that's why I personally prefer LB. And I glyph like that too, Icy Veins always. I go with Water Elemental and Evocation for single target, and Ice Lance and Fireblast for multitarget.

When you are doing heroic and the adds continue to respawn it is probably still a DPS increase (just swap your Heart of the Cosmos for Essence of Terror/Relic of Yu'Lon ideally), but on Normal a significant portion of the fight is killing him on his own so I would not recommend using Frost Bomb in that case.

When you are fighting a single target the loss of trinket proc DPS will be much more significant.

I think we were talking about in general, like in Challenge modes or doing whatever. But if an encounter required you to AoE a lot and not force your single target rotation, then I would probably take a different trinket (even 463) and Frost Bomb.

I agree, I think that NT may sim as higher dps, but I know that I suck at keeping it up on more than 1 mob, that's why I personally prefer LB. And I glyph like that too, Icy Veins always. I go with Water Elemental and Evocation for single target, and Ice Lance and Fireblast for multitarget.

I used to struggle keeping NT up on 1 target let alone multiple but with practice I've learnt to keep it up on multiple targets quite well.

You just have to use some little techniques to keep track of it. Assuming you use nameplates I put NT on 1 and 2 others remembering the name/position of the nameplate then I go back to the first one and continue my single target rotation until NT is about to fall off then I repeat the process. How well it works depends on how much the nameplates move around and how many mobs there are.

You only actually need to remember the first target and you can keep NT up efficiently on 3 targets because it often won't often matter if you don't DOT the same 2 other than your main target. It's all about using the technique to refresh NT without wasting it.

Originally Posted by Imnick

They did say they planned to introduce it eventually, just that like the Warlock Cataclysm spell it just wasn't ready yet for some nebulous reason.

Hopefully they introduce it soon. Frost needs some new spells to change the feel a bit. At the moment it just feels like "Get Proc, Use Proc".

Originally Posted by scuac

Do you use Frost Bomb regardless of trinket (thinking about Light of the Cosmos here)? The only boss fight where you have 5+ targets is the 4th one in HoF or am I forgetting something?

I've got both lfr trinkets (LotC and EoT) and I swap them depending on what bomb I use. LotC for NT and EoT for frost bomb.

Originally Posted by Imnick

When you are doing heroic and the adds continue to respawn it is probably still a DPS increase (just swap your Heart of the Cosmos for Essence of Terror/Relic of Yu'Lon ideally), but on Normal a significant portion of the fight is killing him on his own so I would not recommend using Frost Bomb in that case.

When you are fighting a single target the loss of trinket proc DPS will be much more significant.

I'm not sure what extra mechanics he gets in normal/heroic during the burn phase after the adds are dead but if there's not too much movement (e.g. no need for multiple scorches) Frost bomb with EoT actually sims the best on a patchwerk fight.

You need to keep out of wind bombs and avoid spinning swords but that's nothing a single blink won't fix, sounds like you just need to get a different trinket and you're good then.

You don't even need to blink to get out of the wind bombs unless they're bigger than in lfr? I think people forget that you can move during the GCD since you can't do anything if you've used an instant spell.

Vision of the predator has a crit proc instead of haste like EoT and it's drop chance isn't great (took me about 10-15 runs to get it) but VotP + RoY with frost bomb would probably work well on that fight.